Read the introductory materials for Chapter 9. What kind of property interest, as discussed in the last unit, would intellectual property be? Is it tangible or intangible? How are intellectual property rights important to businesses? While patents or copyrights are the often the first examples that come to mind when discussing intellectual property, there are other important intellectual property rights.

However, they have one key drawback. Trade secret protections can be lost due to reverse engineering, which is the process through which an invention or system is broken down and analyzed in order to uncover its trade secret. Reverse engineering is legal. For this reason, many businesses choose to go the patent route to protect their intellectual property. This section goes into more detail about reverse engineering and how competitors can take advantage of that process.